nyj67: success and death


From an email originally sent June 7.

"She's dead," he said quietly.

"What?!!" I had to lean across the plastic folding table and around the 5-gallon water jug in which he collects money for UHO.

"Alcohol poisoning. I wanted to call you, but I'd lost your card."

"When was this?"

"Last fall. Maybe October, November."

I stood there, not even numb really, but trying to process the news and what my response should be. Would I cry about this later? I had just bought 10 rolls of film at B&H, a carefully budgeted splurge for a trip to Canada on which I embark today. Within hours I'd enjoy a neighborhood bar's $5 goulash night with friends eager to hear of a Sunday photo shoot for which I was the subject.

After more than a year of unemployment, scant funds and plentiful rejection, a small but potent spate of success has left my head perpetually cocked to the side in amazement as if it would help me think this through better. A posture not unsuitable for absorbing the news of Becky's death.

She was a homeless girl I befriended and even lunched with while I worked above Madison Square Garden. The man who gave me her obituary was an educated, semi-stable Jewish man more successful than she at overcoming drug and alcohol addiction and getting off the streets. His large frame and raspy call to "help feed the homeless" are part of the local color outside a Starbucks just south of MSG. We became acquaintances after I met him through Becky one day and he often kept me up on how she was doing. He was the one who told me she had Hep-C.

I don't know how to process her death, honestly. Maybe that's good. In this day of emails you can file in multiple folders (thanks to gmail), and cell phones with handy "reply and delete" options in text-message mode, it's probably good to face events that disrupt our helter-skelter response mode of quick-snap reply or willful ignoring.

I have some choice in how I process this; I don't want to be either apathetic or deliberately forgetful as soon as a "suitable time" has passed. But part of the process involves a distinct dependence on both God and the mysterious workings of my heart, which have their own time and way of working.

In this initial 24 hours after the news, that's all I've gotten so far: a reminder that my life involves both choice and dependence. I chose to ask a friend whether to find an agent for my book proposal, or send it around to editors that I know. God prompted that friend to give me his agent's name. I sent her an email about my book, and then the proposal. God, for whatever reason, gave me favor and that woman as my agent. I chose to joke to a friend he could use me as a source for his article on chastity. God worked things so that friend would take me up on the offer days after I got my agent. God gave us favor with his editors at a major national magazine, who liked my character and wanted to get a picture.

I want to choose humility in response to all this drama, but not even I have the power to fully wrestle that from my heart. I have the will to ask, but I'm dependent upon God to do the transforming.

Maybe you're an atheist, and all this talk of God makes you roll your eyes at more of Christi's silliness. But even you must admit we can't take full credit for the things that happen in our lives. Becky and I shared a common language, a degree of intelligence, and the privilege of being born white. Both of us were born into those things, thus we can't take credit for them. My path seems to be climbing upward just now, while hers took a near-suicidal plunge when she gulped the equivalent of a 2-liter bottle of vodka in less than the 8 minutes it takes for the alcohol to hit your system. Part of that difference results from choices and the way we faced the hands we were dealt at birth and in subsequent rounds. But our fates were neither solely chosen or determined. It's in that either/and straddle that you learn humility or a deepening denial of your fragility and dignity.

I'm off to parts northern today, as I said (yet another random freelance gig), so while I covet your replies I may be slow to hit ya back. I turned down a second interview for that teaching job, but instead I start training with a for-profit Ed Co. for a part-time job that should pay well. And as my book (which will be a memoir of reluctant chastity) seems poised for ready sale, having time to write will probably be a good thing.

posted @ 02:12 PM on Mon - June 27, 2005 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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